


Breeze

by BananaStrings



Category: Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959), Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Acceptance, Alternate Universe - No Giant Leeches, Emotions, Episode: s05e06 Attack of the Giant Leeches, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Guns, M/M, Misunderstandings, Screenshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26447065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BananaStrings/pseuds/BananaStrings
Summary: Living as a homosexual man in the swamplands of the Deep South in the 1950s can feel like something out of a horror flick.
Relationships: Cal Moulton & Dave Walker
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Breeze

**Author's Note:**

> some screenshots:  
> https://bananastringsart.tumblr.com/post/629167308812713984/breeze

The swamp was nearly too dark to see, just a stretch of black water they ran beside, stopping every couple hundred feet to pant until Dave stepped out of the gloom with his shotgun. The katydids sang loud enough to drown out the sound of the shot he laid at their feet. They were so far away from town now; no one would be able to help them.

"It’s not what you think, Dave," Liz was crying out. "It’s not what you think."

Yet even so, she was not giving him up. She was a damn sight braver than him. And, God, this was all his fault, hiding and lying, and he'd brought this on them both. They'd run out of dry ground now, nothing to do but turn and face it. If this was the end of the world, he could bear it, just this once, to say it out loud before he died.

"I’m a queer, Dave," Cal shouted it out, quick, afraid he wouldn’t be able to say it otherwise.

Dave finally stopped their forced march deeper into the wildland. He stared at Cal.

"What?" His voice was quiet.

Cal swallowed hard. "I’m a goddamned straight to hell queer. She’s the only one who’s…who’s been nice to me."

Lord, he sounded childish.

"What are you talking about? I saw you."

"I need affection, Dave," Liz jumped in, seeing the opening for what it was. "He’s the only man who doesn’t look at me like I’m some…thing. You didn’t used to either. That’s why I married you. But you’ve been pressing, Dave. And I can’t be pressed!"

Dave finally lowered the shotgun.

"I don’t mean to press, Lizzie, but you’ve been pressing too. You’ve been making a fool of me and I’m not a fool."

"Then can you understand I’m not made for such a small life? I need room to breathe. I can’t live in that little room stuck in the back of that little store like a trapped animal. It makes me crazy."

"I don’t call you a wild thing for nothing, Lizzie-darling; I know that, but that’s the only life I got to give you. I don’t know why that means you got to sleep with a, a queer."

"I’m not sleeping with him, Dave."

She was laughing and rushing up to hug her husband around his soft, rounded shoulders, and he'd given in now, arm around her back as gentle as he’d always been.

In that moment, Cal realized he was not going to die tonight. And, if he was not going to die tonight, he’d better start figuring out how to save his own life tomorrow. Right now Dave was holding his life in his hands, so they’d better be making real good friends real quick.

"I’m not sleeping with Liz, Dave. I’m just lonely."

Dave was listening if not quite understanding. He was a caring man, sometimes too much, and Cal was counting on that now.

"It’s hard to be different."

Liz had slipped from Dave's grasp, but only to stand close to the man's side and to watch, quiet now. Dave was looking troubled, though Cal couldn’t tell if he was feeling sympathetic or just plain uncomfortable.

"I’ve got no one, Dave," Cal pressed. "I’m always alone."

"You’re not alone, Cal. I—I’m your friend."

Thank God. Cal risked a hand on Dave's forearm, the one with the gun barrel still gripped in his hand. Dave looked down and recognized he was still holding a weapon.

"I wasn’t going to hurt you, Cal and Lizzie, I swear I wasn’t. I just wanted to scare you."

"I just need some company sometimes," Cal continued, as if there had never been any horror tonight, just a conversation between friends.

"You’re not sleeping together?" Dave asked, hoping to be convinced.

Though it was true, it must have been hard to believe, as much as he’d been lied to already. Cal shook his head and offered a small smile.

"I think we both just need to let our hair down sometimes."

Dave glanced at Cal's head, as if checking for some hair secretly tied up there. Cal let his chin tip down with a bashful turn to the side and the smile remain. A discrete glance at Liz showed her wide-eyed with surprise, but he'd learned enough from watching her to know how to lead a man when needs must.

"I just don’t mean to be made a fool of," Dave countered, not even trying to push back anymore, but to make a deal with this new world he’d stumbled into, not wanting to be left out again.

Cal let himself laugh now too. "We have no reason to sneak around anymore, do we?"

"Well, no."

Dave glanced to Liz, who gave him a sweet smile, and then nodded firmly.

"No," Dave repeated.

Dave watched him closely for days afterward, while Cal did what he usually did, sitting in Dave's general store and chewing the fat with the others. Liz was quiet for now in the back, after walking on her husband's arm for a spell after supper. Walked like a dog, Cal could see her thinking when she glanced at him, eyes narrowed and planning, always looking for a way out. But, Dave was watching too, so Cal had made not one move to help her along.

At first Cal thought Dave was looking for some tell, some signal he’d missed before to identify him. It made him itchy, made him feel like begging again like he had out in the dark, begging for his life. But, the longer it went on, the easier Dave seemed to become around him.

It took Cal a week to figure it out. It was Dave worrying over Cal telling on _him_. He'd been worrying that Cal would tell someone what Dave had done, shooting at the dirt at their feet, marching them at gunpoint. Dave had been busy worrying about his own guilt, not about any shame of Cal’s.

Maybe he’d already tucked it away, this new knowledge he had. Dave was an orderly man, kept everything in its place. Maybe it was on a shelf marked secret or sin or simply men who he needn’t keep an eye on around Liz. Cal didn’t know, and he was not going to bring it up. Silence was his only defense in this war—which made it nearly unbearable when Dave decided to bring it up himself.

"Are you really not interested in my Lizzie?" he asked, as though asking about some kind of supernatural occurrence.

Cal didn’t want to answer any questions about what caught his interest in this world.

"Come on, Dave, even if I was, she wouldn’t step out on you. She’s got no mind to hurt you."

Cal could tell he didn’t like that answer, since it wasn't an answer at all.

"But you said—"

"I know what I said," Cal interrupted, low and sharp, "and it’s not something I can say again, ever. That was the only time you’re going to hear about it. The only time anyone is ever going to hear about it."

"Cal, I’m not going to tell anybody," he said, as though it had just occurred to him that Cal might be afraid of that.

Cal just stared him down. He had nothing more to say and hoped Dave hadn't either.

"I swear I’m not."

For some reason it hurt to hear. It was like Cal wanted to trust him, but he just couldn’t reach that far. He left in silence. He'd never even told Liz. They had just joked and danced around it, but he had never confided in her, not as bare baldly as he had that night in the dark. He hadn’t wanted to, but he hadn’t wanted to die for a lie either.

Cal stayed away for a few days. There was a cool breeze blowing through the village, and so everybody was busy getting done what they could while they could. No one lingered at the store with its fans and its freezer to try to stay sane in the heat. Cal fixed up the last car he had to be working on and the lawn mower that had been brought in the day before.

He gave his tools a good cleaning. He was lucky, he thought, that he'd done his internship at a garage in the city. He'd gotten a name for what he was there; queer sounded better than abomination. It had made it so he could live with himself, but it hadn’t taught him how to live with anyone else.

It was a word that meant different, not like other people, not something anyone else could understand. So, he’d never tried to be understood, except with Liz and her jokes and her stories. He’d tried to fit in between the lines there.

Cal threw down his grease-blackened rag. Hell of a lot of good that had done them both. He shouldn’t have put her in that position, half lying for him, keeping secrets with him. It wasn’t fair to her, and he knew it.

He should apologize, but he knew she wouldn’t listen. She was too hard-minded for apologies. She wasn’t like him, didn’t like to fix things. If something didn’t work, her impulse was to move on to what did. He sighed, realizing that he missed her. Even fitting between the lines was better than not fitting anywhere.

Cal could tell Dave believed him after his outburst. He could tell because Dave looked at him with pity, when he thought Cal couldn’t see. It was galling. It was worse than the curiosity. Cal was starting to get angry, more angry than he'd ever felt, more anything than he’d ever felt.

He’d spent so much time being afraid of being found out, trying to pay attention to what everyone else was paying attention to, so he’d never be caught off guard. He hadn’t had time to feel much of anything. He was really not sure what to do. He thought about it while he worked, tried to find the part that was misfiring in him, building up this pressure that he couldn’t seem to relieve.

He spent a lot of time on his back under his old Chevy, polishing and cleaning and tightening and aligning, and it was really not getting any clearer. He needed a mentor, just as he'd had for mechanics. He remembered reading every manual he could get his hands on, tinkering with anyone’s old junker who’d let him, but until he’d seen a skilled hand, he hadn’t known the rhythm of the work—where to focus, what order things went in, what to try first.

Whether he liked it or not, unless he left his hometown, Cal was going to need to trust Dave. He’d have to learn to make it work, or lose everything he’d ever known. He ran through the list of his neighbors, trying to determine who had the most even-keeled demeanour. He settled on the deputy, always as relaxed as can be, even though he had to spend his days working with the blustery, bossy sheriff.

Cal broached the subject that week, after an anecdote the deputy told about the sheriff and a muskrat poacher who had thought that out behind the station was a good spot to set up shop. The deputy described the ranting and raving, the pissing contest with the local game warden.

Cal didn’t really blame the sheriff for that reaction. He’d met the new warden, Benton or something like that. Obviously the outsider thought he was better than the local population. Only down here to court one of those same locals, or so Cal’d heard. Talk about poaching.

"How do you always manage to stay out of it?" Cal questioned. "That warden seemed like he was asking for a knock, if you ask me."

Deputy’s smile was easy, lanky limbs still loose and eyes still clear.

"Hm, military, I think," he postulated. "I’ve had to learn to endure a guy without much to say saying it as loud as he can in my face."

All the men assembled laughed heartily at that. The deputy was well liked. Not taunted for his pacifist philosophy, nor even his poetry books that Sheriff scoffed about him reading on his break.

"Well, tell us your secret," Cal prompted. "How do you endure it?"

"Well, I just tell myself, he’s gotta run out of breath sometime," he joked, setting the men off again. He can see that Cal’s intent on listening though and lets the humor melt away. "In the service, I did about what I do now. We’d get together and give our best impressions and just make sure no one was taking anything too personal. The job was the important part."

"Keeping illegal muskrat fur coats labeled as beaver off the market that important to you?" Cal asked.

Deputy grinned. "Getting paid is that important to me."

"That’s right. That’s right," came the chorus of the men, most of them not at all opposed to poaching in tight circumstances.

"That’s right," Cal echoed, quietly, trying it on.

Cal puzzled it out that night, lying in his double bed over his garage. He was a cleanly sort, sheets a nice white and fresh, room tidy, sinks and basins wiped out. He ironed his short-sleeved cotton shirts and slacks. He made the trip to the barber regularly to keep his hair short and neat. He hadn’t been military, but he’d been church, once upon a time, before he’d lost his parents to illness within six months of one another.

That had been over a decade ago. He wondered why he hadn’t gone back to the city after they’d passed, but then he hadn’t really fit there anymore than he’d fit here, and at least here he knew the rules. He might not care about the rules any more than the deputy cared about the laws, but following them kept him here, like they kept the deputy his job.

There must be some point in staying, if men were willing to endure so much for it. It seemed there wasn’t much a man wouldn’t do, to have a home. And, perhaps to be home there had to be one person there who knew you.

"Cal, what are you doing here?"

It wasn’t quite the greeting he'd been expecting from Dave, as he'd sat in the store and waited for the man to come back from delivery, sipping the iced tea Liz had made. Liz was avoiding him as he’d expected, and it was probably for the best as far as keeping tensions down. Though, Dave had sure come in tense at the sight of him. Cal tried to play it off.

"Can’t a man visit a friend on a slow day?"

Dave glanced toward the back where Liz wasn’t anymore, having wandered off to bother a neighbor’s wife for something or another. Well, one more try, Cal thought.

"Get some iced tea and take a break."

It seemed to occur to Dave that he was being invited to visit. He finally unfroze from his spot by the counter, setting down his receipts and starting for the ice box in back. He paused behind Cal abruptly. And, then there was the startling feel of a hand on his shoulder.

"Course, you can visit, anytime," Dave offered, somewhat rushed and muffled, as he pulled away to get himself a glass.

Dave was too shocked to respond. There had been no pity in the gesture. Dave had reached out for him. He'd met him halfway across the reach Cal had made. And, just like that, it didn’t hurt so much.


End file.
